Programs: PhotoshopLevel: BeginnerSkills: Brushes, Noise, Color Management, TextureRemember: If you use any brushes as a stamp, remember that you MUST declare that as stock artwork when you submit your design!

Have great tutorials you’ve used? Share them in the comments!

The author

Kaitlyn is part of the Community Team at 99designs.com. She grew up in Boulder, CO and went to school at Northwestern University in Chicago. When she's not blogging, she spends her time having adventures and being generally creative. She's all about having new experiences as often as possible!

I think it’s important to make a distinction between design and design techniques. The tutorials above are ok techniques. But few of these examples seemed to have been birthed from a concept. For example why does that design blog have a nature background? Or in what scenarios are we to use those simple organic shapes? There’s no concept. As Petrula Vrontikis likes to say “practice safe design, use a concept!”

If you don’t, you’ll end up with pretty little design projects that are devoid of meaning. And the audience you’re designing for can tell. In the same way that you can sense the amount of thought that goes into an Apple product vs one from Dell.

I’d recommend for beginners to focus on the fundamentals first (concept, composition, hierarchy…) and then let the concept dictate which technique you use. Btw, if anyone is interested I’ve write a lot about this stuff. My profile has more info.